Chapter 1When It All BeganI don’t know when it started because it has always been there. The fear, the dread, the loathing. It took a awhile for me to realize I had lost the ability to scream. My power was taken from me. I was unable to talk or communicate. The silence was deafening, suffocating… I have memories that are like photograph, a picture here, a picture there. I wasn’t a special kid. Kinda tall and skinny for my age but with the face of an angel. I always knew I couldn’t belong to “him”. I looked different from the rest, really curly hair, black-coloured eyes. All of them looked the same except me. They were all part of the group. They belonged. All I knew was that I was always on the outside looking in. I wasn’t them, I didn’t fit in.I was just two when they said it happened first. The hatred just couldn’t stay in. I didn’t know at the time why he hated me. It was just always there. I was told that I had made a mistake and was doing something “he” didn’t like. Then it came, the slap, and my head hitting the floor. I’m sure at that age I couldn’t have understood why “he” was so violent. I soon understood that “he” didn’t want to be around me and that I needed to stay away from him. I remember being left alone a lot as a young child, not totally by myself, because my sister was with me. We would play together a lot and get into trouble during the day. My mother covered a lot. And my mother’s mother. I didn’t know her that well but I heard that she stood up for me a lot. The only thing I remember about her is her sitting me up on the counter and giving me my first beer. I don’t think I was older than three but I remember it. I remember being baby-gated in a bedroom with all the other kids to be “watched.”I remember just living for the moments of being away from “him.” But it was the nights that brought terror and fear. Being terrified of being left alone with “him”. Like a recurring nightmare, I couldn’t escape it. The pain, the shame, feeling like everyone could see it. Torn panties, the pain, things wrong with me that I couldn’t explain. An overwhelming feeling of someone always watching me. My mother was gone a lot during that time of night. She worked as often as she could, which got her out of the house at those times. Maybe she knew and didn’t want to face it. Maybe she didn’t want to be with “him” either and was trying to stay away. All of this went into creating what would happen when I was four. I had reached the end of my rope.I had this small pain in my chest that wouldn’t go away. I don’t know when it started but it never stopped. It was a hurting that started out small then it kept getting bigger and bigger. It was a pain that felt like I had an open wound that was ugly and nasty and no one could see it. I thought someone would notice but no one ever said anything about it. No one would help it or try to make me feel better. So I thought if I could just die, the pain would go away. I needed a way to stop the pain. I wasn’t sure how to stop it, it just needed to stop. One day I was out in the yard with my sister. We were running and playing when all of a sudden we ran by the the water meter plate and I spotted some mushrooms growing. She thought we could eat them, but went inside to ask our mother if we could. I just stood there looking at them while she was gone. I didn’t really like mushrooms so it didn’t seem important to me. She came running back and said, “Mom said don’t touch them they are very poisonous.” The minute I heard that I shouldn’t eat them because they were poisonous, I knew I had found my way out. I sat down in front of them and deliberately and determinately ate about five Death Angel mushrooms that day. You see, even at that young age I had made up my mind that dying was better than living. In my very young mind I could only feel the pain and felt I had no one to help. The way I got to that point was there were things happening in my life that at four years old I had no way of reasoning as to why or how to escape it. To this day I cannot figure out how a small child being rushed to the emergency room because they deliberately tried to kill themselves could be an accident. The doctor didn’t even say a word. No one ever looked into it. They just pumped my stomach, kept me over night for observation, and then sent me home. I remember my mother saying when she got the bill, that I didn’t need to be costing them any money. She also told me that I should feel very bad about making them have to pay for it. That really stuck with me.I began to really feel like I was all alone. The gap began to open between me and my brothers and sisters. They began to notice it too. I continued on shrinking farther and farther into the abyss. I became very introverted and mute. I thought if I didn’t speak no one could see what I was hiding. I wouldn’t speak to anyone unless I absolutely had to. I had become one of the invisible people. I lived my life this way and fought the pain that was getting bigger and bigger.